Running virtual machine image using VMware

Introduction

Community Edition is a paidfree version free for educational institutions of collaborative system developed to manage documents, projects, customer relationship and email correspondence, all in one place.

Community Edition is shipped as a virtual machine image, compatible with most popular virtual machine managing software. Running virtual machine image is easy and does not require any additional setup as the image has already been configured and thoroughly tested, excluding errors which might occur during the installation and configuration process.

This guide will show you how to run Community Edition virtual machine image with VMware virtualization software.

System requirements

CPU dual-core 2 GHz or better

RAM 6 GB or more

HDD at least 40 GB of free space

Additional Requirements

VMware: VMware vSphere Hypervisor and VMware vSphere Client version 5.0 or later

You can download and install VMware vSphere Hypervisor from the program official website at the download page and install it to your server. After that you will need VMware vSphere Client to access the virtual machine managing interface. All further actions are done via VMware vSphere Client.

Getting Community Edition image

First you need to download Community Edition image file. You can do that using our site download page. Once the download is finished, unpack the image file to the location on your computer or server where it will be stored and accessed by VMware.

Preparing the virtual machine image for use with VMware vSphere Hypervisor version 6

Community Edition VMware image is supplied in so called thin format. This means that the used disk size (and image size as well) will expand dynamically with the growth of data and only when needed. This works quite well with VMware vSphere Hypervisor versions 4 and 5, but can present difficulties with version 6 of the software.

When you try to use the downloaded image with VMware vSphere Hypervisor version 6, you might see the LZMA data is corrupt or system halted error messages. The following error is also likely to appear:

The operation on file "/vmfs/devices/deltadisks/ONLYOFFICE_CommunityServer_Linux.8.9.2.vmdk" failed. If the file resides on a remote file system, make sure that the network connection and the server where this disk resides are functioning properly. If the file resides on removable media, reattach the media. Select Retry to attempt the operation again. Select Cancel to end this session. Select Continue to forward the error to the guest operating system.

To prevent that you must convert Community Edition virtual machine image into the thick format (with fixed disk size) prior to using it with VMware vSphere Hypervisor version 6. Run the following command on it:

Create new virtual machine

Now run VMware vSphere Client, connect to your VMware vSphere Hypervisor server machine. There select the available Inventory and choose the File - New - Virtual Machine... top menu option. The Create New Virtual Machine wizard window will be opened where you will be able to set the following:

Configuration: select Custom to be able to choose the downloaded virtual machine image file. Click Next when done.

Name and Location: enter any name you like to distinguish your Community Edition virtual machine from others, in case you have any (e.g. Community Edition). Click Next when done.

Storage: select the available storage for your virtual machine files. Click Next when done.

Virtual Machine Version: select the virtual machine version to be used with Community Edition. Version 8 or later needs to be chosen. Click Next when done.

Guest Operating System: check the Linux radio button and select Ubuntu Linux (64-bit) from the drop down list. Click Next when done.

CPUs: select at least 2 virtual sockets and the available number of cores used with each socket depending on the hardware used. Click Next when done.

Memory: at least 4 GB although 6 GB is the recommended value. Click Next when done.

Network: use the list of available network adapters to select one to use. Each new virtual machine includes a network adapter, and you can configure the adapter to use an available virtual network for communicating with other computers. See the steps below to learn how to properly configure the adapter settings for the Community Edition virtual machine to be accessible from outside. Click Next when done.

SCSI Controller: select one of the controllers available in the list. Click Next when done.

Select a Disk: select the Use an existing virtual disk. Click Next when done.

Select Existing Disk: click the Browse button to the right of the hard disk file name field. In the opened Browse Datastores window locate the downloaded and unpacked file with Community Edition installation, select it and click the OK button. Click Next when done.

Ready to Complete: review all the previous steps to finish the installation process or return to some of them and correct the selected settings.

After that click Finish.

Running Community Edition for the first time

To run Community Edition virtual machine select it in the list of available machines and click the Start top toolbar button. The machine will be started and will load like a common Ubuntu Linux operating system.

The first time run will ask you for the Ubuntu Linux operating system access credentials. The following ones are used:

login: onlyoffice

password: onlyoffice

You will be asked to change the password at the first login. After the successful login all the services necessary for Community Edition start will be automatically launched. You can check if everything is okay launching an available browser and entering the local network machine IP address (please do not use either localhost or 127.0.0.1 network address for the same machine where you have Community Edition installed, use its IP address in the local network instead) to the browser address bar. The Community Edition welcome screen will be displayed which will mean that everything is up and running.

Making Community Edition available from outside

To make Community Edition available from outside (including other computers over the network or via the Internet), you need to set the adapter used for Community Edition virtual machine as bridge, not as NAT. This is normally done by default with VMware, but you should make sure that it is configured this way. Please refer to VMware website in case you have any troubles with setting up virtual adapters.

Once this is done, start the virtual machine, login and go to Ubuntu network settings and set the necessary parameters for your server to be connected either to the local network or to be accessible via the Internet. See our article or Ubuntu official documentation for more information on how this can be done.

Docker (used to run Community Edition in the virtual machine image) specifies Google DNS servers by default. If your Community Edition server is not going to have access to the Internet, we recommend that you change the default Docker DNS address to the address of your local DNS server. To do that go to the /etc/default/docker file and change the IP address in the following line to the IP address of a DNS server in your local network: